We have frequently been interested by the clever contributions of M. Philarète Chasles to the Revue des Deux Mondes. They are chiefly on English and American literature, and among them are specimens of acute and genial criticism. M. Chasles has just published in Paris a collection of these papers, and we translate for The International a reviewal of it which appears in a late number of the French journal, the Illustration. Says the writer, M. Hipolyte Babou:
Books are becoming scarce. To be sure, volume upon volume is published every day, but a book that is a book is a rara avis, and if any one should inquire whose fault it is, we reply that it is the fault of the press, constantly requiring the first-fruits of a writer's meditations. The journalist has displaced the author. The fugitive page rules the great world of literature. Wit, talent, genius, science, have not time to consolidate their thoughts, before they are disseminated. They are like the folds of the birchen bark, thrown off as soon as formed, to give place to new ones. And these in their turn fall, and are scattered. But, when we wish it, we can collect our literary leaves. How many handsome volumes are made up of weekly and monthly pages! The binder runs his needle through a collection, and the book is made.
What kind of book? Ah, truly, it is not the venerable work of past days, which took ten years to print and bring to perfection, establishing at once a literary fame. It is simply a series of articles written by steam, printed by steam, and some bright morning bound up under a common title. But what is the story and the attraction of such works? Bless you! there is no story. The attraction is in the style (when there is any) and in the variety of subjects, which generally produces a variety of impressions.
For an ordinary reader, to whom continued attention produces headache, there is nothing more agreeable than those album-pages, or fragments of mosaic. Thinking and serious minds turn rather towards works of consecutive reflection, or whose details contribute to the beauty of some whole. Variety is the wind to the weather-cock; and unity is the inflexible pivot which every weather-cock requires to keep it from being blown away. Thoughtful minds prefer unity above every thing. And yet they are only heavier weather-cocks, which turn round with a grating.
Nervous and discursive reader! logical and phlegmatic reader! here is a book which will suit you both. M. Philarète Chasles has just published expressly for you his Studies upon the Literature and Manners of the Anglo-Americans in the Nineteenth Century. It is a work by compartments, any of them interesting to the superficial reader, and forming at the same time a perfect whole.
Under the influence of a spirit of order, which professors by their vocation are very apt to possess in an eminent degree, the author has composed his work, not of articles written for journals, but by detailing articles a work whose plan he had before considered. The general design, to which he is obedient, is clearly developed, page by page, in his curious studies upon the Anglo-Americans.
It is a vile term—that of Anglo-American—a pedantic term—and rather surprising from the pen of Chasles. For, professor as he is, he despises pedantry as the plague. There is nothing doctoral in his literary costume; and if he has any pretension, it resembles in no particular the grave assumptions of the cathedrants of the university. It would be a mortification to him to belong to the school of the Sorbonne. He is a member of the free family of the College of France, where individual genius has triumphed more than once over the sterile routine of tradition.
Before filling the chair of professor, the author of Etudes had written much in journals and reviews. He writes still, and is always welcome to the public. For, it may be remarked without malice, he has always had a larger audience of readers than of listeners. And that it is so is rather complimentary than otherwise. How is it, indeed, that the intellectual humorist succeeds better as an author than as a teacher? What does he need to insure, if he wishes it, the enthusiastic admiration of the young public whom he instructs? Has he not at command those vivid flashings of the imagination which, by an electric sympathy, might bring down about him thunders of applause? Is he fearful that his gesture and his voice would not become his thought? Does he disdain to have recourse, hap-hazard, to the little artifices of eloquence? It is very easy to gain popularity by a juggle, when it cannot be done by the force of true oratory. Be enthusiastic of your merits. Mingle with the swellings of poetry a certain dogmatism of opinion—call to your aid assurance, impudence, and all the insipidities of the style printanier—fire, as it were, pistol-shots into the audience, and continue the fire by a brilliant musketry of little fulminating phrases—the victory is yours, unless you are essentially an ass. For youth—verdant youth—will always be carried away by the expression, true or false, of feeling.
M. Philarète Chasles is said to want in some degree that great constituent of humanity—passion. He is one of those refined and delicate writers who employ all their genius to ridicule the mind, and all their reason to drive to shipwreck upon the beautiful waters of poesie the most charming flotillas of the imagination. He belongs to the breed of sharp raillers, whose skepticism points an epigram. In a word, there is no reverse side for his admiration on any question—a habit of judging quite common among many writers, genuine and charlatan.
But this is not saying that the author of Etudes does not feel deeply the irresistible attraction of the beau ideal; or that we are treating of one of those representatives of pompous and stupid criticism, who are so justly despised by the poets. Certainly not. On the contrary, M. Chasles combines a vigorous hate of ornate folly and vulgarity with a profound disgust towards tame or extravagant conventionalism. The academic style has no fascination for him. He likes elbow-room in the discussion of art, and if he finds himself confined by the close-fitting coat of the professor, he rips it asunder, stretching out his arms in a fit of restlessness. A protective literature regards him among its most resolute adversaries. No custom-houses in literature for him, and particularly no excisemen, who, under pretext of contraband, drive their brutal gauge-rods into the free productions of human intelligence.